Book Preview

Leaving Blue 5.1 Part 3 - Thadd Evans

Rossell

Chapter One

After many months, an old galactic map, one of millions, appeared. Our home planet wasn’t on it. Predicting Blue’s exact location was difficult because gravitational pull from nearby planets was bending light, creating inaccurate galactic charts. At our current rate, we would die of old age long before reaching our final destination. I banged my fist on the arm of the chair, frustrated.

Darwin glanced at me. In his eyes, icons saying that he understood my disappointment separated.

In front of our ship, a wormhole opened.

I stood, amazed. What caused that?

Darwin waved his hand across a screen, retrieving archives. Unknown.

Exp 2 entered the hole, a structure without any light. Without warning, we came out of it. The ship veered port, then went by the edge of a huge asteroid belt filled with huge meteors.

My stomach muscles relaxed, because we were less likely to collide with them. Sometimes I felt as if we were living on borrowed time. In a few days or months, asteroid dust would hit our space vessel and tear it apart.

Within hours, I entered my office and sat down. Someone had recently placed a small glass cube on my desk. Inside the cube, a 3 D rose blossomed. Next to the rose, there was a handwritten note.

Greg,

Why don’t you spend more time with me?

Love, Irea

What could I give my lover to show her how much I loved having her around? I wasn’t sure. There was another problem. If I didn’t give my full attention to the ship, it would go off course.

On my vtp, Jen’s face, an incoming call, enlarged.

She narrowed her eyes, concentrating. "Exp Two is creating flight paths, routes based on neutrinos. But I can’t tell if these flight paths will lead us toward Blue because it isn’t showing up on any charts.

We’re still a long way from Alpha Centauri A. At our current rate, we’ll reach Blue in eighty years.

I flinched. Keep me posted.

I will.

I remembered that neutrinos, ghostly particles without mass, barely slowed down as they passed through stars and planets. According to my database, nobody could attach any data to neutrinos.

But if they had, that meant the data had been created at the Planck scale. The very idea that anyone could work at such a tiny scale boggled my mind. It made me feel like an ape trying to understand a race of advanced beings, aliens who were moving planets with starships.

Chapter Two

I entered the bridge as Darwin leaned back in his chair.

Much to my surprise, his body was replaced by arteries, veins, and capillaries, all of them the shape of a humanoid. Next to the aorta, a heart kept beating. Beneath the heart, at the top of the pelvis, bones began spreading out.

Now the heart was covered by a rib cage. Perhaps it was Darwin’s skeleton. I wasn’t sure. The skeleton faded. A brain along with a central nervous system materialized!

They vanished. A semi-transparent stomach, throat, and intestines took their place. Within seconds, all of them turned opaque.

The stomach faded. One at a time, muscles gradually appeared. On a forehead, skin spread out, covering Darwin’s entire body. From the neck down, patches of his uniform expanded.

Darwin spoke, Greg, Exp Two is checking my health.

Is it using x-rays?

No. As primary cosmic rays and neutrinos go through your body, they interact with your red blood cells, DNA and hippocampus. The ship’s servers collect those interactions. Then Exp Two diagnoses you.

I looked down. My skin vanished, the beginning of a medical exam.

David’s face appeared on my vtp.

He grimaced. "RM Five just entered the engine room and burned a lot of cables with a flamethrower. Caldur, Irea, and I shouted voice commands. Five just ignored us.

"Unfortunately, after searching the database, we discovered that RM Eight removed the only other flamethrower from storage room four and broke down. Initially, we couldn’t find Eight. A few minutes later, we found it. However, Eight didn’t have the flamethrower. xx

We asked it where it was, but Eight couldn’t remember. Although we’ve searched through video records, we still can’t locate it.

I’ll help. I hurried out of the room and rushed inside an elevator. It lifted and stopped. Sam entered.